Kitabı oku: «Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VIII – AFLOAT
The Admiral Pekhard nosed her way out of the port just as dusk fell. She dropped her pilot off the masked light at the end of the last great American dock – a dock big enough to hold the Leviathan– and thereafter followed the stern lights of a destroyer. Thus she got into the roadstead, and thence into the open sea.
The work of the Allied and American navies at this time was such that not all ships returning to America could be convoyed through the submarine zone. This ship on which Ruth Fielding had taken passage for home was accompanied by the destroyer only for a few miles off Brest Harbor.
The passengers, however, did not know this. They were kept off the open decks during the night, and before morning the Admiral Pekhard was entirely out of sight of land, and out of sight of every other vessel as well. Therefore neither Ruth nor any other of the passengers was additionally worried by the fact that the craft was quite unguarded.
The Admiral Pekhard mounted a gun fore and aft, and the crews of these guns were under strict naval discipline. They were on watch, turn and turn about, all through the day and night for the submarines which, of course, were somewhere in these waters.
The Admiral Pekhard was not a fast ship; but she was very comfortably furnished, well manned, and was said to be an even sailing vessel in stormy weather. She had been bearing wounded men back to England for months, but was now being sent to America to bring troops over to take the place of the wounded English fighters.
Ruth learned these few facts and some others at dinner that night. There were some wounded American and Canadian officers going home; but for the most part the passengers in the first cabin were Red Cross workers, returning commissioners both military and civil, a group of Congressmen who had been getting first-hand information of war conditions.
Then there were a few people whom the girl could not exactly place. For instance, there was the woman who sat next to her at the dinner table.
She was not an old woman, but her short hair, brushed straight back over her ears like an Americanized Chinaman’s, was streaked with gray. She was sallow, pale-lipped, and with a pair of very bright black eyes – snapping eyes, indeed. She wore her clothes as carelessly as she might have worn a suit of gunnysacking on a desert island. Her eyeglasses were prominent, astride a more prominent nose. She was not uninteresting looking.
“As aggressive as a gargoyle,” Ruth thought. “And almost as homely! Yet she surely possesses brains.”
On her other hand at table Ruth found a kindly faced Red Cross officer of more than middle age, who offered her aid at a moment when a friend was appreciated. Ruth did very well with the oysters and soup; and she made out with the fish course. But when meat and vegetables and a salad came on, the girl had to be helped in preparing the food on her plate.
The black-eyed woman watched the girl of the Red Mill curiously, seeing her left arm bandaged.
“Hurt yourself?” she asked shortly, in rather a gruff tone.
“No,” said Ruth simply. “I was hurt. I did not do it myself.”
“Ah-ha!” ejaculated the strange woman. “Are you literal, or merely smart?”
“I am only exact,” Ruth told her.
“So! You did not hurt yourself? How, then?” and she glanced significantly at the girl’s bandaged arm.
“Why, do you know,” the girl of the Red Mill said, flushing a little, “there is a country called Germany, in Central Europe, and the German Kaiser and his people are attacking France and other countries. And one of the cheerful little tricks those Germans play is to send over bombing machines to bomb our hospitals. I happened to be working in a hospital they bombed.”
“Ah-ha!” said the woman coolly. “Then you are merely smart, after all.”
“No!” said Ruth, suddenly losing her vexation, for this person she decided was not quite responsible. “No. For, if I were really smart, I should have been so far behind the lines that the Hun would never have found me.”
The black-eyed woman seemed to feel Ruth’s implied scorn after all.
“Oh!” she said, resetting her eyeglasses with both hands, “I have been in Paris all through the war.”
“Oh, then you’d heard about it?” Ruth intimated. “Well!”
“I certainly know all about the war,” said the woman shortly.
The girl of the Red Mill seldom felt antagonism toward people – even unpleasant people. But there was something about this woman that she found very annoying. She turned her bandaged shoulder to her, and gave her attention to the Red Cross officer.
Strangely enough, the queer-looking woman continued to put herself in Ruth’s way. After dinner she sought her out in a corner of the saloon where Ruth was listening to the music. The windows of the saloon were shaded so that no light could get out; but it was quite cozy and cheerful therein.
“You are Miss Fielding, I see by the purser’s list,” said the curious person, staring at Ruth through her glasses.
“I have not the pleasure of knowing you,” returned the girl of the Red Mill. “Can I do anything for you?”
“I am Irma Lentz. I have been studying in Paris. This war is a hateful thing. It has almost ruined my career. It has got so now that one cannot work in peace even in the Latin Quarter of the town. War, war, war! That is all one hears. I am going back to New York to see if I can find peace and quietness – where one may work without being bothered.”
“You are – ?”
“An artist. I have studied with some of the best painters in France. But I declare! even those teachers have closed their ateliers and gone to war. I must, perforce, close my own studio and go back to America. And America is crude.”
“Seems to me I have heard that said before,” sniffed Ruth. “Although my acquaintance among artists has been small. Do you expect to find perfect peace and quietness in the United States?”
“I do not expect to find the disturbance that is rife in Paris,” said Irma Lentz shortly. “This war is too unpopular in the United States for more than a certain class of the people to be greatly disturbed over what is going on so far away from home.”
Ruth looked at her amazedly. The artist seemed quite to believe what she said. Aside from some few pro-Germans whom she had heard talk before Ruth Fielding had left the United States, she had heard nothing like this. It was what the Germans themselves had believed – and wished to believe.
“I wonder where you got that, Miss Lentz,” Ruth allowed herself to say in amazement.
“Got what?”
“The idea that the war – at least now we are in it – is unpopular at home. You will discover your mistake. I understand that even in Washington Square they know we are fighting a war for democracy. You will find your friends of Greenwich Village – is that not the locality of New York you mean? – are very well aware that we are at war.”
“Perfect nonsense!” snapped Irma Lentz, and she got up and flounced away.
“Now,” thought the girl of the Red Mill, very much puzzled, “I wonder just what and who she is? And has she been in Paris all through the war and has not yet awakened to the seriousness of the situation? Then there is something fundamentally wrong with Irma Lentz.”
She might not have given the strange woman much of her attention during the voyage, however, for Ruth did not like unpleasant people and there were so many others who were interesting, to say the least, on board the ship, if a little incident had not occurred early the next morning which both surprised Ruth and made her deeply suspicious of Irma Lentz.
The girl could not sleep very well because of pain in her shoulder and arm. Perhaps she had tried to use the arm more than she should. However, being unable to sleep, she rose at dawn and rang for the night stewardess. She had already won this woman’s interest, and she helped Ruth dress. The girl left her stateroom and went on deck, which was free to the passengers now.
As she passed through a narrow way behind the forward deck-house on the main deck, she heard a sudden explosion of voices – a sharp, high voice and one deeper and more guttural. But the point that held Ruth Fielding’s attention so quickly was that the language used was German! There was no doubting that fact.
There certainly should be nobody using that language on this British ship carrying Americans to the United States! That was Ruth’s first thought.
She walked quietly to the corner of the house and peered around it. The morning was still misty and there were few persons on deck save the gangs of cleaners. Backed against a backstay, and facing the point where the girl of the Red Mill stood, was Irma Lentz, in mackintosh and veil.
The strange woman was talking angrily with a barefooted sailor in working clothes. He was bareheaded as well as barefooted, and his coarse shirt was open at the throat displaying a hairy chest. He possessed a mop of flaxen hair, and his countenance was too Teutonic of cast to be mistaken.
Besides, like the woman, he was speaking German in a most excited and angry fashion.
CHAPTER IX – QUEER FOLKS
In school Ruth Fielding and her classmates had taken German just as they had French. Jennie Stone often said she had forgotten the former language just as fast as she could and had felt much better after it was out of her system.
But the girl of the Red Mill seldom forgot anything she learned well. She had not used the German language as much as she had French. Nevertheless she remembered quite clearly what she had learned of it.
The seaman who was talking so excitedly to Irma Lentz, and whom Ruth overheard on the deck of the Admiral Pekhard, used Low German instead of the High German taught in the educational institutions. Ruth, however, understood quite a little of what was said.
“Stop talking to me!” Miss Lentz commanded, breaking in upon what the man was saying.
“I must tell you, Fraulein – ”
“Go tell Boldig. Not me. How dare you speak to a passenger? You know it is against all ship rules.”
“Undt am I de goat yedt?” growled the man, in anger and in atrocious English, as the young woman swept past him. Then in his own tongue – and this time Ruth understood him clearly – he added: “Am I to work in that fireroom while you and Boldig live softly? What would become of me if anything should happen?”
Fortunately the woman did not come Ruth’s way. She whisked out of sight just as the tramp of a smart footstep was heard along the deck. An officer came into sight.
“Here, my man, this is no part of the deck for you,” he said sharply. “Stoker, aren’t you? Get back to your quarters.”
The flaxen-haired man stumbled away. He almost ran, it seemed, to get out of sight. The officer passed Ruth Fielding, bowing to her politely, but did not halt.
The girl of the Red Mill was greatly disturbed by what she had seen and overheard. Yet she was not sure that she should speak to anybody about the incident. She let the officer go on without a word. She found a chair on a part of the deck that had already been swabbed down, and she sat there to think and to watch the first sunbeams play upon the wire rigging of the ship and upon the dancing waves.
The ocean was no novelty to Ruth; but it is ever changeable. No two sunrises can ever be alike at sea. She watched with glowing cheeks and wide eyes the blossoming of the new day.
She was not a person to fly off at a tangent. No little thing disturbed her usual calm. Had Helen been there, Ruth realized that her black-eyed girl chum would have insisted upon running right away to somebody in authority and repeating what had been overheard.
There was just one circumstance which kept Ruth from putting the matter quite aside and considering it nothing remarkable that two people should be speaking German on this British ship. That was her conversation the evening before with Irma Lentz, the artist.
The woman had made a very unfavorable impression on Ruth Fielding. Any person who could speak so callously of the war and wartime conditions in Paris, Ruth did not consider trustworthy. Such a woman might easily be connected with people who favored Germany and her cause. Then – her name!
Ruth realized that one of the greatest difficulties that Americans, especially, have to meet in this war is the German name. Many, many people with such names are truly patriots – are American to the very marrow of their bones. On the other hand, there are those of German name who are as dangerous and deadly as the moccasin. They strike without warning.
In this case, however, Irma Lentz, it seemed to Ruth, had given warning. She had frankly displayed the fact that her heart was not with her country in the war. After what Ruth had been through it annoyed her very much to meet anybody who was not whole-heartedly for the cause of America and the Allies.
She thought the matter over most seriously until first breakfast call. By that time there had appeared quite a number of the passengers. The more seriously wounded had all the second cabin, so those passengers who could get on deck were like one big family in the first cabin.
As the sea remained smooth, the party gathered at breakfast was almost as numerous as that at dinner the night before. Irma Lentz did not appear, however; but Ruth’s Red Cross friend was there to give her such aid at table as she needed.
“What would you do,” she asked him in the course of the meal, “if you heard two people speaking German together on this ship?”
He eyed her for a moment curiously, then replied: “You cannot keep these stewards from talking their own language. Some of them are German-Swiss, I presume.”
“Not stewards,” Ruth said softly.
“Do you mean passengers? Well, I speak German myself.”
“And so do I. At least, I can speak it,” laughed the girl of the Red Mill. “But I don’t.”
“No. Ordinarily I never speak it myself – now,” admitted the man. “But just what do you mean, Miss Fielding?”
“I heard two people early this morning speaking German in secret on deck.”
“Some of the deckhands?”
“One was a stoker. The other was one of our first cabin passengers.”
The Red Cross man’s amazement was plain. He stared at the girl in some perturbation, at the same time neglecting his breakfast.
“You tell me this for a fact, Miss Fielding?”
“Quite.”
“Have you spoken to the captain – to any of the officers?”
“To nobody but you,” said Ruth gravely. “I – I shrink from making anybody unnecessary trouble. Of course, there may be nothing wrong in what I overheard.”
“But a passenger talking German with a stoker! What were they saying?”
“They appeared to be quarreling.”
“Quarreling! Who was the passenger? Is he here at table?” the Red Cross man asked quickly.
“Do you think I ought to point him out?” Ruth asked slowly. “If it is really serious – and I asked for your opinion, you know – wouldn’t it be better if I spoke to the captain or the first officer about it?”
“Perhaps you are right. If it was a merely harmless incident you observed it would not be right to discuss it promiscuously,” said the man, smiling. “Don’t tell me who he is, but I do advise your speaking to Mr. Dowd.”
Mr. Dowd was the first officer, and he presided at the table on this morning as it was now the captain’s watch below. Ruth had been careful to say nothing which would lead her friend to suspect that the passenger she mentioned was a woman.
“Yes,” went on the Red Cross officer firmly, “you speak to Mr. Dowd.”
But Ruth did not wish to do that in a way that might attract the attention of any suspicious person. The woman, Irma Lentz, had mentioned another person who seemed to be one of the queer folks. “Boldig.” Who Boldig was the girl of the Red Mill had no idea. He might be passenger, officer, or one of the crew. She had glanced through the purser’s list and knew that there was no passenger using that name on the Admiral Pekhard.
Even if Miss Lentz was out of sight, this other person, or another, might be watching the movements of the passengers. Ruth did not, therefore, speak to the ship’s first officer in the saloon. She waited until she could meet him quite casually on deck, and later in the forenoon watch.
Dowd was a man not too old to be influenced and flattered by the attentions of a bright young woman like Ruth Fielding. He was interested in her story, too, for the Red Cross officer had not been chary of spreading the tale of Ruth’s courage and her work in the first cabin.
“May I hope the shoulder and arm are mending nicely, Miss Fielding?” Mr. Dowd said, smiling at her as she met him face to face near the starboard bridge ladder.
“Hope just as hard as you can, Mr. Dowd,” she replied merrily. “Yes, I want all my friends to will that the shoulder will get well in quick time. I haven’t the natural patience of the born invalid.”
He laughed in return, and turned to get into step with her as she walked the deck.
“You lack the air of the invalid, that is true. Remember, I have had much to do with invalids in the time past. Although now we do not see many of the people who used to think there was something the matter with them, and whose physicians sent them on a sea voyage to get rid of them for a while.”
“Yet you do have some queer folks aboard, even in war time, don’t you?” she asked.
“Why, bless you!” said the Englishman, “everybody is more or less queer – ‘save thee and me.’ You know the story of the Quaker?”
“Surely,” rejoined Ruth. “But now I suppose most of your queer passengers may be spies, or something like that.”
She said it in so low a tone that nobody but the first officer could possibly hear. He gave her a quick glance.
“Meaning?” he asked.
“That I am afraid I am going to make you place me right in the catalogue of ‘queer folks.’”
“Yes?”
His gravity and evident interest encouraged her to go on. Briefly she told him of what she had overheard that morning at daybreak. And this time she did not refuse to identify clearly the woman passenger who had talked so familiarly with the flaxen-haired stoker on the afterdeck.
CHAPTER X – WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
Ruth Fielding was not a busybody, but the peculiar attitude of the woman, Irma Lentz, toward America’s cause in the World War and what she had overheard on deck that morning, as well as the advice the Red Cross officer had given her, urged the girl to take Mr. Dowd, first officer of the Admiral Pekhard, fully into her confidence.
He listened with keen interest to what the girl had to say. He was sure Ruth was not a person to be easily frightened or one to spread ill-advised and unfounded tales. Useless suspicions were not likely to be born in her mind. She was too sane and sensible.
The chance that there were actually spies aboard the Admiral Pekhard was by no means an idle one. In those days of desperate warfare between the democratic governments of the world and the autocratic Central Powers, no effort was neglected by the latter to thwart the war aims of the former.
To deliberately plan the destruction of this ship, although it was not, strictly speaking, a war ship, was quite in line with the frightfulness of Germany and her allies. Similar plotting, however, had usually to do with submarine activities and mines.
That German agents were aboard the Admiral Pekhard with the intention of bringing about the wrecking of the ship was, however, scarcely within the bounds of probability. Notably because by carrying through such a conspiracy the plotters must of necessity put their own lives in jeopardy.
No group of German plotters had thus far shown themselves to be so utterly unregardful of their own safety.
Ruth believed Irma Lentz to be quite bitter against the United States and its war aims; but she could not imagine the self-styled “artist” to be on the point of risking her personal safety on behalf of America’s enemies.
These same beliefs influenced Mr. Dowd’s mind; and he said frankly:
“It may be well for us to take up the matter with Captain Hastings. However, I cannot really believe that German spies would try to sink the ship, and so endanger their own safety.”
“It does not seem reasonable,” Ruth admitted. “Nor do I mean to say I believe anything like that is on foot. I do think, however, that the woman and that seaman, or stoker, or whatever and whoever he is, should be watched. They may purpose to do some damage to the Admiral Pekhard after she docks at New York.”
“True. And you say there is a third person – a man named Boldig? His name is not on the passenger list.”
“That is so,” admitted Ruth, who had read the purser’s list.
“I’ll scrutinize the crew list as well,” said Mr. Dowd, thoughtfully. “Of course, he may not use that name. I remember nothing like it. Well, we shall see. Thank you, Miss Fielding. I know Captain Hastings will wish to thank you in person, as well.”
Ruth did not expect to be immediately called to the captain’s chartroom or office. Nor was her mind entirely filled with thoughts regarding German spies.
She had, indeed, one topic of thought that harrowed her mind continually. It was that which kept her awake on this first night at sea, as much as did the dull ache in her injured shoulder.
Had she expressed the desire for her companionship, Ruth knew that Helen Cameron would have broken all her engagements in France and sailed on the Admiral Pekhard. Her chum was torn, Ruth knew, between a desire to go home with the girl of the Red Mill and to stay near Tom. As long as Tom Cameron was in active service Helen would be anxious.
And did Helen know now what Ruth feared was the truth – that Tom had got into serious trouble with the flying ace, Ralph Stillinger – she would be utterly despairing on her brother’s account.
Ruth read over and over again her letter from the ambulance driver, Charlie Bragg, in which the latter had spoken of the tragic happening on the battle front – the accident to Ralph Stillinger and his passenger. Of course Ruth had no means of proving to herself that the passenger was Tom Cameron, but she knew Tom had been intending to take a flight with the American ace and that the active flying men were not in the habit of taking up passengers daily.
The American captain who had been lost with Ralph Stillinger was more than likely Tom Cameron. Ruth’s anxiety might have thrown her into a fever had it not been for this new line of trouble connected with the artist, Irma Lentz. Or, was she an artist?
The news that had reached Ruth just as she boarded the Admiral Pekhard had been most disquieting. Had her passage not been already arranged for and her physical health not been what it was, the girl surely would have gone ashore again and postponed her voyage home.
This would have necessitated Tom’s sister learning the news in Charlie Bragg’s letter. But better that, Ruth thought now, than that her own mind should be so troubled about Tom Cameron’s fate.
All manner of possibilities trooped through her brain regarding what had happened, or might have happened, to Tom. He might not, of course, have been the passenger-captain of whom Charlie Bragg wrote. But this faint doubt did not serve to cheer Ruth at all.
It was more than likely that Tom had shared Ralph Stillinger’s fate – whatever that fate was. The American ace’s airplane had been seen in battle with a Zeppelin. It had been seen to fall. Afterward the wreck of the airplane was found, but neither of the men – either dead or alive – was discovered.
That was the mystery – the unknown fate of the flying man and his passenger. The amazing fact of their disappearance caused Ruth Fielding anxiety and depression of mind.
She even thought of trying to get news by wireless of the tragic happening to the flying man and his companion. But when she made inquiry she learned that because of war measures no private message could be sent or received by radio. Such wireless news as the naval authorities considered well to distribute to the passengers of the Admiral Pekhard was bulletined by the radio room door.
Later Ruth was sent for to attend the captain in his office. She found the commander of the ship to be a tight, little, side-whiskered Englishman with a large opinion of his own importance and an insular suspicion of Americans in general. This type of British subject was growing happily less – especially since the United States entered the war; but Captain Hastings was not so favorably impressed by Ruth Fielding and her story as his first officer had been.
“You know, Miss Fielding, I don’t wish to have any hard feelings among my passengers,” he said. He verged toward a slight cockney accent now and then, and he squinted rather unpleasantly.
“This is a serious accusation you bring against Miss Irma Lentz. I have seen her passport and other papers. She is quite beyond suspicion, don’t you know. I should not wish to insult her by accusing her of being an enemy agent. Really, Miss Fielding,” he concluded bluntly, “she seems to be much better known by people aboard than yourself.”
Ruth stiffened at the implied doubt cast upon her character. Here was a man who lacked all the tact a ship’s captain is supposed to possess. He was nothing at all like Mr. Dowd.
“I have not asked to have my status aboard your ship tested, nor my reputation established, Captain Hastings,” she said quietly but firmly. “Had I not thought it my duty to say what I did to Mr. Dowd, I assure you I should not have put myself out to do so. But as you have – either justly or unjustly – judged the character of my information, you cannot by any possibility wish to know my opinion in this. There was scarcely need of calling me here, was there?”
She arose and turned toward the door of the chartroom, and her manner as well as her words showed him plainly that she was offended.
“Hoighty-toighty!” exclaimed the little man, growing very red in the face. “You take much for granted, Miss Fielding.”
“I make no mistake, I believe, in understanding that you do not consider my information to Mr. Dowd of importance.”
“Oh, Dowd is a young fool!” snapped the commander of the Admiral Pekhard. “He is trying to stir up a mare’s nest.”
“Your opinion of me must be even worse than that you have expressed of your first officer,” tartly rejoined the girl. “If you will excuse me, Captain Hastings, I will withdraw. Really our opinions I feel sure would never coincide.”
“Wait!” exclaimed the captain. “I am willing to put one thing to the test.”
“You need do nothing to placate me, Captain Hastings,” declared Ruth. “I am quite, quite satisfied to drop the whole affair, I assure you.”
“It has gone too far, as it is, Miss Fielding,” declared Captain Hastings. “Dowd will not be satisfied if you do not have the opportunity of identifying the stoker you say you saw talking with Miss Lentz. And that, in itself, is no crime.”
“Then why trouble yourself – and me – about the matter any further?” asked Ruth, with a shrug, and her hand still on the knob of the door.
“Confound it, you know!” burst forth the captain, “it has to go on my report – on the log, you know. That fool, Dowd, insists. I want you to see the stokers together, Miss Fielding, as the watches are being changed at eight bells. If you can pick out the man you say you saw on the after deck, I will examine him. Though it’s all bally foolishness, you know,” added the captain in a tone that did not fail to reach Ruth Fielding’s ear and increased her feeling of disgust for the pompous little man, as well as her vexation with the whole situation.
She wished very much just then that she had not spoken at all to the Admiral Pekhard’s first officer.
